The Falcon Sword
by R Amythest
Summary: In which ever-masculine Eliwood – the greatest warrior in Lycia – is an excellent Marquess, marries Lyn, and makes a complete mess out of their personal lives.


Notes: I keep writing these drabbly things on a whim of late. This _technically _fills a request that has been widely circulated in recent times, which you may or may not have seen. Of course, I filled it in a way that pleases me most. If you are aware of the "prompt", you may be terribly amused at this; it is meant to address the nature of the request first and anything truly Elibean second. If you have not seen the prompt, well... uh, this will seem pretty random, and perhaps inexplicably half-OOC. (I would not personally choose to use the motif "Falcon Sword" or render Eliwood as an emotionally repressed character.)

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The Falcon Sword

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"You could at least let me have another room," Lyndis said. Sitting at his desk, papers before him, Eliwood placed his quill into his inkwell and looked up to her coldly.

"It's not appropriate," he said.

"Stars above, you're driving me mad," she muttered under her breath. Then louder, "I dote upon you and you won't lend me a night's sleep. For appearances!"

He pursed his lips at her. She hadn't doted upon him. Never. When they first met, she was not doting, and he admired her for it. Ninian doted; Lyn was strong, prideful, independent. No matter her place as his wife, in this way her character could not change.

In place of doting, she endured him. For the first few years, she listened as a friend and not a lover as he spoke often of the war. He recalled the people he gutted with a blade so dirtied that he thought it could not be the rapier of sport he had known in his youth. He referred to it throughout the war as the Falcon Sword as if that would make the feel of sword hilt in hand any different than it had been in happier times. Now the words "Falcon Sword" never passed through his lips, because he was not in war anymore. Or at least he tried not to be.

Then he spoke about his father. She learned that Elbert had been a man of expectations. That Eliwood wished he had been able to conjure more than a weak lick of flame and demonstrate the magical talent that Eleanora had in her youth. That he had disappointed Elbert then, from thereon in his failure to save him, to his failings even still as a Marquess. "Pherae is the happiest canton in all of Lycia," she had told him. Even compared to Caelin. It was written by sages and travelers from Bern and Ilia and beyond.

He never seemed to hear her. "There's an orphanage near the Santaruz border," he would begin.

"We cannot help all the misfortune in this world," she would try to say to him. It never changed his expectations.

But what strained her the most was his mumblings for the dragon girl. "Without thinking. I killed her. Just like that." She would wrap an arm around him as she wondered why he wed her if his mind still revolved about another.

Trying to understand his regrets without jealousy, she would say, "She was brought back. You know she must be living happily somewhere beyond the Dragon's Gate. You know she forgives you."

"Yet she loved me. She was nothing but kind to me. I killed her."

Years and years later, Lyn wanted to destroy his words with, _And now you're killing me_. Night by night, tales repeated through his head and worming into her ears. As if she hadn't herself been to war, ran her slender blade to release a tangle of dark organs from bodies of scarred warriors and almost-children alike. As if she hadn't watched the slaughter of her people, her father's arms trembling as he set her upon a horse and slapped its flank weakly, her horse staggering in red mud as she screamed for her daddy to come with her. As if even now she wasn't suffering for a moment's compassion, bound by paperwork and guards and a thin metal band to a castle with a man who was once her friend and now her burden.

A year before, Kent had offered to whisk her away in private, back to Sacae and the open air she longed for. Like Wallace for her mother, he would break his vows for what was right for her. She had agreed. She had packed her things and made for the servant's passage when Roy cried from the other room, and she thought what it must be like for her child to be raised by a man who could no longer raise himself.

Now she stared across the room at the tired man regarding her presence contemptuously and she wondered if she had made the right choice after all. "You dote upon me? Do you remember what you told me last week?" Of course she did. She bit down on her lip and stifled her indignation with the knowledge that she was not blameless. She remembered her head aching with drowsiness, woken in what seemed like the five hundredth night in a row. In a fit, she had rejected his quavering words, his trembling hand."'By Father Sky, will you wait until morning?'" And then he had been quiet, folding himself away to his half of the bed. She could not drift back to sleep, thinking upon the unspeakable thought she had finally let herself say.

"Eliwood," she said, using his name for what seemed like the first time in a year, "I truly regret that." He regarded her with his anxious blue eyes, well-meaning but guarded, hurt but desperate. "So often I think that it would have been kinder if I had simply said no at the beginning."

"Perhaps," he quietly allowed. "It's too late now."

"Will you stop living your life in regret? It's not too late. Appropriate be damned, there are things that could be done."

"All this, for a room?"

"Even better," she said, looking askance to the window, "you could let me go." He opened his mouth and she imagined that he would ask _What about Roy?_ "Rebecca will rear him well. She already does."

Without hesitation, he said instead, "Please don't leave me, Lyndis."

The first vulnerable thing he'd said to her since that night. A hint of need that hadn't seen daylight since their marriage. "Why? What do you gain from this?" She looked back to him, Marquess Pherae, known for his remarkable strength, his perfect calm, and his brilliant swordsmanship. He just shook his head. She could tell why he couldn't let go – whether torrid or sordid, she was the only one who knew Eliwood as he was. And yet this shouldn't have been. "Perhaps if you talked to Hector about this..."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"He's a man," Eliwood murmured. "There are things unspoken between us. You wouldn't understand."

Did friendship between men run so shallow? "I truly don't."

"I am not weak, Lyndis." Five or six years ago, she would have agreed. She admired the strength of the warmhearted man who bore his burdens, accepted the tasks handed to him, and wept when he must.

Now she looked upon her husband, his wrinkles binding his burden beneath his skin, his grief saved for the night and her. "You are weaker than you were," she said. "You cannot face yourself as any Sacaean could as his first duty to himself. You know we have destroyed our former friendship, but you cannot bear for our marriage to end. You still cannot speak the name of the Falcon Sword, as if you could pretend you never killed."

Stricken, Eliwood stared at her with both hands curled upon the table, too dumbfounded to be enraged. Lyn closed her mouth about her sharp tongue and turned from him, a strange guilt trailing her honesty. How strange, she thought, that of late she should regret speaking the truth. How terrible. Perhaps the court had swayed her principles. Or perhaps the truth really had become a thing of shame.

"I don't know how much longer I can bear this," she said aloud. Nor he, she thought to herself. "This cannot go on forever."

"Lyndis, please try. Just for now."

"For the rest of your life, you mean." She glanced back at him and crossed her arms. "Or mine."

Eliwood ran his hands through his auburn hair. "Things will get better. I just need your support a little longer." Facing away from him, Lyn scoffed softly. "Please. Just a little longer."


End file.
